Lilies Under The Moon
by Maharet11
Summary: Countess Dracula sequal. Following her Mother's funeral, the daughter of Jonathan and Alice Harker finds out about her family's dark history and is drawn steadily further into the shadows. Femslash.
1. A Funeral, A Reunion, A Dream

Wilhelmina Harker was always quick to chastise those who called her by that name. She was just Wil, thank you very much. She certainly did not care for a name as fancy and long as Wilhelmina. But truly such chastisements were ill-suited to such an occasion as this, and that was why she hid her growing annoyance behind a blank façade as she was told, "My condolences, Miss Wilhelmina," for the umpteenth time.

Really, it was not as though condolences would bring her mother back. No, Alice Harker nee Beswick would never move from her ornate, flower-adorned coffin, and that was that.

"Wil?" croaked a hoarse voice full of wonder. It was a man with snow-white hair that did not quite match the relative youthfulness of his face. Her eyes widened and she bit her lip, for she knew well this face. It was the very same one featured in the miniscule portrait contained in the round locket that always hung from a fine silver chain around her neck. This man was Jonathan Harker, her Father. Her memories of him were pleasant but vague, as Mother had left him when she was very young and she had not seen him since. She could not remember the reason for the schism, only lots of yelling and crying, and Mother had never been forthcoming. Perhaps Jonathan had been unfaithful?

"Daddy?" she whispered, and reached up to clutch her locket. "Daddy, is that you?"

Her Father's smile was one of heartfelt joy. "I was afraid you wouldn't remember. Dear, dear Wil. You don't mind my calling you that, do you?"

"Not at all," she said gently. "It's about time someone in this damn churchyard did. If it wouldn't be a gross breach of etiquette, I'd slap the next person to call me by that damnable tongue twister."

Jonathan's lips twitched, but his expression became wretched as the coffin was lowered into the ground. A low groan escaped him. Struck by pity, Wil rested a comforting hand upon Jonathan's – Father's – shoulder.

Later, they were the last ones remaining in the churchyard. Stone monuments to the restful dead stood proud around them. Somewhere close by, a nightingale sang its pretty melody. "Um, Father? If you don't mind me asking… that is, well… why did Mother leave you?"

"You mean she never told you?" He sneezed, and then used a baby-blue handkerchief to wipe his red, runny nose. Wil gave him a concerned look. Perhaps she should later mix him up a warm concoction of lemon juice and honey? Mother had always done so for her when the flu came knocking at her door…

"She found out something about my past, something that I always meant to tell her but never did. It frightened her, frightened her terribly. So she grabbed you and ran. For a long time I searched for both of you, but it was as though you vanished off the face of the Earth. Eventually I came to think that perhaps I didn't deserve you. The searching became less fervent at that point, although I always felt that some vital part of me was missing. And then I heard of the funeral, and I hastened here immediately. Never, ever, could I miss it."

"What was the secret she discovered?" Wil prompted, both to satisfy her relentless curiosity and to distract Father from the terrible melancholy that imposed itself within his soul. Neither aim was realised, however, for Father's countenance took one more step towards wretchedness before he turned away, head lowered and shoulders slumped. Not a word did he say. Guilt seized upon her, so she shoved her curiosity to some deep dark corner of her mind to be re-examined at a later date.

Shadows lengthened as the sun descended. Father startled as he realised the lateness of the hour, and snuck an anxious peek at her. Wil smiled tentatively. "Where are you staying?" she asked.

"I plan to stay at an inn," he replied. "I only arrived today, so I have yet to make arrangements."

"Stay with me. I'd love the opportunity to get to know you better."

It took some haggling, for he was reluctant to inconvenience her, but he eventually accepted her proposition. Both of them smiled as they made their way to her home, for although they had lost someone dear to them they had also found each other at last. Wil cooked up a roast for supper along with the warm lemon and honey concoction she had earlier thought of. Afterwards she took his hands in hers and earnestly said, "Truly I mean not to bring you pain, but I should very much like to know what terrible secret came between you and Mother. Please tell me, that it may not one day come between us."

"You are right, but I fear. Will you leave me as she did? No, don't answer. I will tell all. I used to love another woman long before I met Alice. Her name's Wilhelmina Murray… yes, just the same as you, darling, and she too prefers a shorter version – Mina. Ah, beautiful she is, and we were engaged to be married. The seeds of our parting were sewn when I received an assignment from the law firm I worked for at that time. I was to travel to Romania, to the wild heart of the Carpathian Mountains, and help Count Dracula in the purchase of several properties around London. Oh, if only I knew! But I did not, and so I journeyed away, leaving Mina with her dear aristocrat friend Lucy Westenra. It's uncanny, you know, how much you look like Miss Westenra, but I suppose it's just coincidence. Dracula's castle lies in a strange, wild region, but none of that is as strange as the castle itself, nor that as strange and terrible as the man himself. You may think it impossible, but I swear I tell the truth. Count Dracula is a vampire, an undead drinker of blood!"

"That is indeed strange, but I see the truth in your eyes. Please continue, Father. You're the best thing I have left; I swear to stay by you even if it's revealed that you yourself are now a vampire."

"I'm not a vampire, I promise you, but thank you. My heart is warmed and reassured. The vampire imprisoned me, leaving me to be continually drained by three demonic women." He shuddered, and his daughter hastened to drape a woollen blanked over his shoulders. "Eventually I escaped, and stumbled feverish into a monastery. God praise those good Sisters that cared for me and nursed me back to health. A letter was sent to Mina, calling her to me that we may be married, and so she came. We married in a humble ceremony, and hastened back to London shortly thereafter. Oh! But what dastardly news awaited us there! Miss Westenra had died and risen again as a vampire. Good men had since brought about her passing into the grace of God, but Dracula was in London. I joined Abraham Van Helsing, Arthur Holmwood, Jack Seward and Quincey Morris in a quest to put down the monster. We left Mina alone in the guest quarters of Jack's asylum. Vampires cannot enter any private building without an invite, but one of the patients had given him one."

Wil gasped. "He killed Mina, didn't he?" She sat forward in her seat, every muscle tense.

"He fed her his blood," Father grimly replied. "We pursued him as he fled back to Romania, determined to end him that Mina might be saved from becoming his creature. To deceive him we went in one direction while Mina and Abraham went in another. We hoped that if he looked into her mind to see her location he would presume us to be with her. Still he evaded us, but we managed to close the gap as he drew near to his castle. Quincey fell from his horse and died, but we almost had the monster. That's when Mina stepped in. She helped him to escape and killed Arthur. I… she claimed responsibility for Abraham's murder as well. She assured me that she was acting of her own free will because she loved Dracula. She said that I should leave, forget her and find someone new."

"She'd become a vampire."

"Yes. I… I ended up leaving and marrying Alice, but I never could forget Mina. I guess she couldn't forget me either, because we've been pen-pals ever since. That's how Alice found out – she discovered the letters. I never knew until then that her parents were murdered by vampires. She wanted nothing to do with one of their… allies. Because that's what I've become, isn't it?"

"I guess so," murmured Wil, smiling weakly. "Father… I promised to stay by you, and I shall. You're still the best thing I have left, you know. But what happened to Jack? Did he come back with you?"

"No," Father replied, and a violent shiver travelled though him. "He's a vampire now. He… fell in love with one of those… demon-women."

The clock chimed midnight.

"Oh, is it that late already?" said Father. "I'm sorry for keeping you up so long, daughter." There was a wonderful joy in his eyes as he tenderly pronounced that last word.

Wil smiled and said, "I don't mind at all. I'm just glad to have met you at last."

That night she dreamed that rain drummed relentlessly around her as she laughed and danced through a maze of hedges. She clutched the hand of a beautiful brunette who was also laughing, her doe-like eyes brimming with the same joyful passion that she felt rising in her breast. Their lips met in exactly the same moment that thunder rumbled loudly in a way that was almost judgemental. They clasped each other in cold, clammy, wet embraces. One word echoed ecstatically in her mind, repeated over and over. _Mina._

When Wil awoke, light shone through her window, blinding her. Wincing, she reflexively jerked the coverlets over her head. In soothing darkness her addled brains reordered themselves, and she remembered who and where she was. She was the respectable Wil Harker, most certainly not a woman who danced in thunderstorms and pashed other women.

But why had she felt so much happier in that dream than she ever had while awake?

Dreams came from the subconscious, did they not? Then did that mean that she…

She shook off the thought, and rose to change swiftly into her daywear. The sun was already high in the sky and she would be made a terrible hostess if her guest – her long-lost Father no less – was forced to prepare his own breakfast in the interest of avoiding starvation.

She found him in the sitting room, dressed smartly in a dusky brown suit and reclining upon a loveseat with the morning newspaper unfolded in front of him. He lowered it and smiled when he heard her enter. She smiled back, and then inquired as to what he would take for breakfast. Within minutes she was bustling around her small but efficient kitchen, humming as she prepared two steaming bowls of sweetened porridge.

They ate in agreeable silence, and Wil took the opportunity to study him from beneath modestly lowered eyelashes, hungrily drinking in the sight of this man who was her Father. The tale from the previous night had certainly excited her imagination. To think that vampires, those fiends from grotesque tales of horror, actually existed! Unexpectedly, an image flashed before her eyes – herself, deathly pale and bloody-lipped, a child held in her arms. A crimson droplet fell from the tip of a fang that barely emerged from between those macabre lips, descending like rain to mar the glittering white of her burial gown.

She blinked, and the vision was gone. First that sinful, homoerotic dream, and now this… What in the world was wrong with her?

"Wil?" asked Father, his voice hoarse and concerned. She gave him a shaky smile that was meant to be reassuring.

"I'm fine."

The look he gave her communicated clearly that he did not really believe her, but was not going to push the subject. Gratefulness bloomed within her, for she had no idea what she could have said if he had called her on it. She felt as though she was exploring a maze of pitch-black tunnels, and that with even one slip of the foot she would lose her very self.

She laughed abruptly. What silly, fanciful thoughts these were! All of the recent excitement – her Mother's malignant tumours, the funeral arrangements, meeting her Father, learning of the existence of vampires – must have gotten to her. But by no means was she in danger of losing herself.

Surely it was so.

_Never mind that,_ she mentally scolded herself a moment later. She really did need to go shopping…


	2. Death Trap

"Wil!"

It was her dear friend Helen, ignoring the enraged shouts that followed her as she charged headlong through even the smallest, most precarious gaps between carriages. The slightly younger girl skipped to a stop in front of her, head bowed. "I'm so sorry I wasn't able to come to the funeral."

Wil accepted her friend's apology in silence, her expression solemn. Soon enough, her melancholy slid away as water would from a roof, and she laughed merrily as she placed a hand upon Helen's shoulder. "Lets not talk about that today, darling. All this grief is very wearisome, don't you think? I miss Mother terribly, of course, but it would surely make her miserable to look down from heaven only to see me wasting away. Her soul is with God, not in that cold corpse that rots beneath the ground, a fine meal for worms… Oh! That's simply terrible. Let's not speak or even think of it, dear Helen. Pray do tell, what is it I've been hearing about a young gentleman from France?"

Helen shook her head, her expression exasperated. "I should have expected something like this… Very well; his name's Nicolas and I met him at one of Father's dinner parties. He was perfectly charming, so when he invited me to dinner in the city I accepted right away. We've been out together several times since, and I hope very much that he will propose to me. I'll make you my maid of honour, of course, if you'll accept."

"Of course I will! I hope it goes well for you. You know, something quite extraordinary happened to me yesterday."

"Oh? And what was that?"

"I met Father! At last, after so many years…"

"Oh Wil, that's wonderful! Tell me all about it."

And Wil did just that, although she omitted the parts about vampires. Even if it was not dismissed as the ranting of a madman, she was sure that Father would not want her to jeopardise Mina in such a way. _Mina_… Wil froze as she remembered that that had been the name of the woman in her dream.

She obstinately banished all such thoughts, however, and the two of them laughed as they stepped through a shop door. The bell tinkled, mirroring the gaiety of their demeanours as Helen teased Wil good-naturedly about the flock of men who seemed to have their eyes on her. "I'm sure you'll get many, many proposals all at once, any day now," the younger woman giggled.

Wil involuntarily shuddered. For some reason, she never seemed quite able to trust the idea of either a fiancé or a husband. Perhaps she had been betrayed by her betrothed in a past life, she thought jestingly. Perhaps he had even killed her.

She greeted Father cheerfully when she returned to the house. He seemed surprised by her mood, but she waved it away, saying that she was quite done with dwelling in the past when the future was so precious and all-to-short. This sentiment evidently pleased him, for a certain spark of liveliness appeared that had been previously absent, and they chattered frivolously for several hours hence. Then Wil said casually, "I would very much like to see a picture of Mina, if you have one."

He did have one – a faded photograph in a small oval frame. Wil stepped back upon seeing it, for it was the exact image, down to the last detail, of the woman from her dream.

"Wil? Are you alright?"

"Y-yes. It's just… nothing."

Father frowned. "It's not nothing," he said with certainty. "I've told you my story. Will you not tell me this one thing?"

"I saw her in a dream," she muttered, looking down with a blush. "Only last night, and I'd most certainly never seen her or her image before then. I just thought it odd, that's all."

Father frowned in a way that made Wil grateful that she had not disclosed the peculiar nature of her dream. The moment passed, and he laughed as a good-natured smile formed on his face. "It seems, darling, that you are full of mysteries. I must remember in my old age that that's not necessarily a bad thing. The devil has plagued me but that doesn't mean that angels do not walk among us also."

She smiled insecurely and decided that she would not mention the vision she had received of Wil Harker the vampire. "I want to go to Romania," she said compulsively, and did not back down when Father gave her a look of surprise and disapproval. It was just as he himself had said – she was full of mysteries, and she somehow felt that answers awaited her in the Carpathians. "I've heard that it's very picturesque," she told him plaintively. "Please don't begrudge me this."

"Well, it isn't ugly, but there are many places prettier," he said, not quite meeting her gaze. "Why not go to Italy? There is a city there where instead of carriages and roads one travels on boats in canals. And Rome is truly majestic…"

"No," Wil interrupted with a vehement shake of her head. "It has to be Romania. It just has to be."

Father raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips, his countenance one of suspicion.

"The… mountains," Wil hastily continued. "Yes, the mountains. Italy doesn't have mountains like Romania's. I must see those beautiful, wild mountains."

"The Alps are just as fine…"

"That's not the same. The Carpathians contain such unstained wilderness. It has to be them."

"They're not unstained, Wilhelmina. Far from it."

"You know what I mean. And don't call me Wilhelmina!"

At the end of an ongoing, weeklong argument, it was decided that Wil would go to Romania, but not alone. She had mixed feelings about the latter. The extra time to bond with Father would be nice, but she did hope that the trip would not be ruined by his extreme wariness bordering on paranoia.

"You're going to Romania?" Helen pouted when she heard the news. "But why? It's so far away. If you go running off to strange, far-away places like this you'll never be home in time for my wedding."

"You're not even engaged yet," Wil protested, laughing. "I'm not making a career of travelling. I'll be back before you know it."

She dreamed again the night before her departure. This time she was an aristocrat in a lavish parlour where she flitted among a flock of suitors; three good, handsome men. Far from her customary revulsion and vague, inexplicable fear at such a situation, she flirted shamelessly with every one of them. But her eyes were not for them, not really. She smiled cheekily and winked at the gorgeous brunette standing in the corner of the room. The brunette smiled back, and then schooled her expression into one of stern disapproval. But the aristocrat could see the laughter that lingered in the other's eyes, and it made her happy. She would marry one of these manly suitors as was expected, and her friend would marry her own fiancé, but they would always place the most value upon each other.

Everything changed. Now she lay helpless in her resting place, her… coffin? Her chosen fiancé placed the tip of a wooden stake over her heart, and then down swung the hammer.

She awoke with a scream and the brunette's face in her mind, a last comfort. Several seconds passed before she remembered who and where she was, and one of her first thoughts, before _I'm grateful I'm not dead after all_, was; _Mina again. _

Why did a woman she had never met keep on appearing in her dreams? _At least I wasn't kissing her this time._ Why did that make her feel… disappointed?

Helen was there to see her off at the harbour with a young gentleman garbed in Parisian fashion by her side. "Wil, this is Nicolas. Nicolas, Wil."

Nicolas took Wil's hand in his and brushed his lips against her fingertips. "It's an honour, Miss Harker. I've heard quite a bit about you from Helen."

"I've… heard a bit about you as well," she replied, fidgeting somewhat uncomfortably. She was not sure why, but something about this man induced wary caution within her.

"Good things, I hope," he said with a charming smile.

"Yes… very good."

Helen blushed. Wil excused herself as soon as she was able, hurrying to join Father on the ship. She waved to Helen and Nicolas as the ship departed, desisting only when they had become mere dots on the horizon. _To think, I'm actually going to Romania. I wonder if I'll meet Mina there._ A small thrill tingled down her spine at the thought, and she determined that she would not mention any such thoughts to Father.

A mere day later, that was the last thing on her mind. They had been caught in a storm that sent waves broiling and clashing beneath them, tossing the boat this way and that in a manner significantly more unpredictable than a seesaw. Nausea resulted; she lay staring blankly at the ceiling, trembling and gritting her teeth with pause only to vomit over the side of her bed. To further complicate matters, she developed a minor fever shortly thereafter.

The fever was running the late stages of its course by the time she gained enough of a sailor's sea-legs to walk shakily about the dock as the ship cut through now-calm waters, and to think of anything beyond the overwhelming urge to empty her stomach of every last nutrient contained therein. She soon found this to be more a curse than a blessing, however, for the reality of Mother's demise finally caught up with her.

Mother was dead, gone forever. Wil would never be able to talk to her again. Mother was never, ever coming back.

She had known this, of course, but it had never really sunken in until now. She had been in shock, in denial, without ever realising it, and now she was paying the price for ever believing that she simply had a gracious, accepting attitude towards the Grim Reaper's embrace. Father noticed that something was wrong, and like a good parent expressed concern and tried to help, but she found herself unable to respond favourably. She fended him off with cruel, cutting comments. "Stop acting like my Father when you've never been there before," she screamed. She knew that he had never wanted to be parted from her, but she could not help herself. She found herself unable to really care when she saw his involuntary tears before he turned away, and she loathed herself for it.

Worse than any of this, however, was when she realised that she was unable to cry. Miserable, full of emptiness and unpredictable emotions both at once, her eyes remained as dry as the Sahara. It was as though her tear ducts had been emptied during the time she spent observing the unstoppable decay of Mother's health. The tears had disappeared sometime during Mother's bed bound last months, she realised, when she had blinked them away and put on a brave face for the by-then emaciated woman.

She had recovered somewhat by the time they walked once again on land, the overwhelming grief mellowing into an ever-present yet dull ache. A certain, slightly cold distance was maintained between father and daughter nonetheless. That first evening on the train Wil watched the sunset through a window, and basked under its crimson glow that made her and the world appear stained by blood. She could not suppress a smile at the irony.

It was not so funny the following morning, when a powder-pale corpse was discovered a few compartments down. The man had, a travelling doctor concluded, been drained of his blood. A rigorous search upturned not one spilt drop.

The same thing happened the next morning, and the next, and the next. The train did not stop, not even where it was scheduled. The conductor's compartment was bolted and locked. Several attempted to force the door, but to no avail.

The irony of that evening sky increased one hundred fold but Wil did not smile. Nothing was funny when stuck in a mobile death trap.


End file.
